“I am ready to do it ... When I say something that definitively, I mean it …We will create tax reform,” he told her and everyone else attending the Association for a Better New York breakfast. He estimated it would take "a year or two" to bring all the stakeholders together.

So much for that.

Deputy Mayor Vicki Been told a packed house at Tuesday's Crain’s breakfast forum that it was unrealistic to expect the de Blasio administration to fix the system in its remaining two-plus years in office. De Blasio had tapped Been to head a panel he and the City Council had formed to come up with reform. But she resigned from it when she was named deputy mayor, and the effort clearly faltered.

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For the record, the city’s property tax system favors homeowners in single-family homes, condos and co-ops over renters. It benefits homeowners in neighborhoods where property values have soared over those in less well-off areas. It especially reduces taxes for the most expensive condos. In doing so, it favors whites over minorities.

Been said that a foundation could be laid so the next mayor could pick up the cause. This was disingenuous at best: Critics of the system have done all the work required to show what is wrong and have suggestions for what to about it. She knows that.

It would be tempting to write that the next step is to make sure the candidates in the 2021 mayoral race lay out their position on the issue. I’m too cynical to do that. The politics would lead to the candidates pledging that no one would see their property taxes increase in a reform, which would cost the city billions in revenue and end any hope for change.

The fate of the property-tax system now lies with a Manhattan Supreme Court judge presiding over a lawsuit filed by Tax Equity Now New York, a coalition of real estate, community and civic groups, challenging the system on the grounds it is racially discriminatory. Only a ruling by the judge in favor of Tax Equity Now will force the politicians to act.

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